Kick Off Labor Day weekend with the Porch Music Club

Start your Labor Day weekend with free live music at the Concerts on the Creek series in downtown Sylva. The Porch Music Club, an old-time string band, will play a two-hour show beginning at 7 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 3, at the Bridge Park Pavilion.

The Porch Music Club band evolved from a Western Carolina University student group that plays music every Thursday at the Mountain Heritage Center on campus. The band plays a variety of old-time and bluegrass music. Some of the famous acts they cover include the Avett Brothers and Doc Watson.

Members of the band include fiddle player William Ritter of Bakersville, guitarist Andrew Payseur of Lincolnton, banjo player Patrick Brady of Cullowhee and guitarist Benjamin Rudolph of Asheville.

This was scheduled to be the last show in the summer-long Concerts on the Creek series, but a bonus performance has been added for Sept. 10. That night an all-star lineup of area gospel acts will perform.

Concerts on the Creek, held every Friday since Memorial Day weekend, are co-produced by the Jackson County Chamber of Commerce, Jackson County Parks & Recreation, Downtown Sylva Association, Jackson Country Travel & Tourism, and the Town of Sylva.

This Must Be the Place

Standing in line at the Old Europe coffee shop in downtown Asheville, I said that to my old friend, Jerica. It was a rainy Sunday evening and we’d just gotten out of a documentary screening (about Tim Leary and Ram Dass) at the Grail Moviehouse. While I was mulling over the cosmic nature and theme of the film and what our place is in the universe (as per usual), I looked over at Jerica and smiled.

Reading Room

Of course, we’re intended to read from cover to cover many books — novels, histories, biographies, and more. It would make little sense to begin Mark Helprin’s novel A Soldier of the Great War on page 340 of its 860 pages. We might open and commence reading Paul Hendrickson’s Hemingway’s Boat, on page 241, but we’d miss some of the…